"You Can't Fire Us, We Quit" - Embraer
Jacksonville's Cecil Field (KVQQ) was expecting to get a 71,000
square foot manufacturing plant that isn't coming now; Lockheed
Martin isn't getting some eight billion dollars it was counting on
($879 million of it immediately, the rest over 20 years); the Army
isn't getting its next generation spyplane, and Embraer isn't
getting its nose into the trough of US defense spending.
Naturally, no two parties agree who gets the blame for the
collapse of the Aerial Common Sensor platform project, but from the
outside looking in, Lockheed Martin's inept stewardship of the
program combined with the Army's need to rein in out-of-control
procurement spending probably deserve the laurels.
Lockheed, for their part, seems to blame military program
managers who kept moving the goalposts and adding more pet
surveillance gear to the program, until the mission suite comprised
so much electronic voodoo that it couldn't physically fit in the
originally-selected carrier aircraft, the Embraer ERJ 145.
Embraer held up their
end of the program as best they could, but only this week announced
that they were out and not trying to get back in, although they'll
continue to pursue other US defense opportunities. Several
nations currently operate surveillance or maritime patrol aircraft
based on the economical ERJ platform, but the US would have been a
nice feather in the Brazilian company's cap.
The Army and Navy were going to buy seven aircraft in the next
four years, with orders for dozens more possible. The Embraers were
going to be outfitted in a new Homeland Security and Defense
facility in Jacksonville that was going to be constructed to
assemble these aircraft. With the withdrawal of Embraer from the
project, the plans for a Jacksonville plant, which Embraer had
planned to erect on 10 of 40 acres it controls at Cecil Field, were
put on hold.
In a story in Forbes, Army spokesman Colonel Joseph Curtin said,
"One of the biggest problems is that the platform that we and the
industry people were looking at could no longer hold the complex
systems we wanted to put on it."
The program has been in trouble for some time. In September, the
Pentagon ordered a halt to work and gave Lockheed Martin till the
end of the year to come up with a workable alternative. In
November, LM suggested substituting a Bombardier Global Express for
the ERJ 145 airframe (file photo, below, in Continental
Express livery).
After reviewing the proposal, the Army decided that, despite the
large sums already spent, the even larger sums ahead and the lack
of a workable technical plan made this project too risky and
uncertain to continue.
The Army currently operates a fleet of surveillance aircraft,
including the RC-7B, a conversion of the DeHavilland Canada
Dash-7.
The military services still need an improved surveillance plane,
but they will start over again with a new contract.
Previous Aero-News Coverage of this contract:
Bolen Gives Congress a Rare Thumbs-Up
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